Which still isn't good enough to get in the playoffs. And with our team being so old, where is the improvement going to come from? Is that the goal? To be a .500 team?
No, the goal is to be as successful as possible every year. And aside from the fact that we have plenty of young guys who can improve (our only guys that play that are close to "old" or Brad and Mikki--Ron is in his prime, and John is approaching his). Everybody else could still improve every year to help the team win. Am I saying that I really think we'll be a playoff team next year? Probably not. But we'll be a pretty good team that will hopefully start to put more fans in the seats, and raise our own players' values.
No, no, no, the Sonics and Blazers already have a young foundation in place, which is why they can afford to sign veterans to fill around the outside. We don't have a young core; our main players this year were Ron, Brad and Kevin, which not only just isn't competitive, but doesn't have much room for improvement either. How can we expect to build something when our foundation is so flawed?
But they don't have to be our main foundation in say, two years, when the young guys that we do have are improved enough to take over.
And also, the argument still stands--Portland doesn't know who their starting PG will be in the future, and according to yours and SacKingzzz's logic, they are delaying the progress of their young PGs by signing Blake.
Also, I'm not saying to necessarily keep this roster together no matter what, just to only make trades that are fair for us. If we can get what Petrie considers to be a good rebuilding package, then fine. But I think you guys are wrong to say "Petrie should trade our vets for expirings and picks regardless". Trading to trade hurts our team's over all value.
So what's the other way to rebuild, and who's done it that's gone on to be a contender?
Detroit, Phoenix to a certain extent (Amare was their only draft pick, except Marion, but he hardly counts for that specific Phoenix team), Boston in a way, Lakers (different situation, since they had Kobe, but still), the Warriors to a certain extent (not a contender at this point though, obviously). Don't get me wrong, there are always some draft picks, but they usually just make up a huge part of the team.
You've got to be kidding me, that's not progress. How many games would we have won if we weren't? 41? 43? Not only is that not good enough for the playoffs, but you've already tapped out the potential of that team. So continuing to blindly wallow in mediocrity with such a crappy foundation is short-sighted and stupid.
It's not "blindly wallowing in mediocrity", it's "not willingly falling from mediocrity to just flat out sucking". Nobody is against trading to make the team better. If Geoff thinks he sees the next JO in the league somewhere (i.e. an assumed bust who could still break out), I have no problem with him trading Ron for that. What I do have a problem with is essentially just trying to get rid of players that are helping your team just to try to get somebody younger.
And I think that Petrie knows this. I don't think Bibby was traded for luxury tax purposes; we wouldn't be in the luxury tax territory if we didn't sign Mikki or if we don't resign Beno. If the idea is to keep the most talent on the roster as possible without going into luxury tax, we would have kept Bibby and let Beno go.
I'd argue that this team is better with Beno and Mikki than we are with Mike.
Regardless though, you're wrong. If you include Kevin's salary next year (which I suspect you didn't since no websites that I know of, have), we're already at $63million. Mike's salary would've brought that up to about $74mil if I'm not mistaken. Taking away Mikki's salary doesn't even come close to making up the difference.
And if Artest's future was so secure early on, then why was he nearly traded at the deadline for Kleiza and a 1st? Isn't that the "youth/picks" that you seem so averse to? Maybe you should re-evaluate what Petrie is thinking.
I already answered this.
Yeah, I think we assumed that Ron would probably want to leave us for a more winning situation, and so Geoff put out feelers to try to get what he could. I think the team was always interested in keeping Ron, but they just got the impression that he wasn't interested in staying.
Oh, and for the record, the last team that Petrie built? We traded our "star" for a risky youth (Richmond for Webber). We stockpiled expiring contracts, got far enough under the cap to sign Vlade. And, we got a high enough lotto pick to select Jason Williams (7th). Isn't this the triumvirate that you seem so scared of?
I'd be fine trading our star for a risky youth that Petrie [b]specifically likes. What I wouldn't be okay with is just blindly trading our star for youth that's good because it's youth.
And really, what expirings are you praying for? Ron is already expiring, trying to trade Kenny or SAR for expirings at this point wouldn't be worth what we would have to give up. The only person we could really trade for expirings at this point would be Brad, but that still wouldn't get us enough cap space to do anything next summer in the way of FA. What we will have next summer is potentially, I think close to $30million in expirings to offer up in potential trades from the beginning of summer up to the trade deadline. Worst case scenario is that we can't make any trades and we just get a nice helping of cap space.
And I mean really, do you think our team's future is shot because we got the #12 pick instead of the #7 pick?[/b][/quote]
